I skipped a June update because I had little to relate. The situation was essentially the same as May. This month, though, there is movement afoot!

In June I picked up Drew Storen in the hope that Matt Capps’s rough patch would lead him to lose his closer job, but that never happened. Storen has provided a month of good stats in relief but no saves.

At the time, I had to decide between him and Aaron Heilman, who seemed to be a possibility for saves In Arizona. Since then, Heilman has indeed become the closer there. I chose wrong. Somehow, though, Heilman went unselected in our monthly update draft and I was able to snag him at the second-to-last position. That’s right, I’ve climbed to second place. Here’s how it breaks down:

.268 batting average (3rd and in a huge clump of five vying for second place)
106 HR (4th)
469 RBI (2nd)
81 SB (2nd and will fall no lower than 3rd)
4.07 ERA (6th up from 10th)
1.26 WHIP (2nd up from 7th)
40 wins (6th)
20 saves (tied 8th)

It’s a pitching year. Only one team has a batting average over .270. With my crappy pitchers on the disabled list, my team has a WHIP of 1.16 and an ERA of 3.21 over the last 28 days.

Heilman alone will get me 2.5 additional points. I’m in second, 14 points behind the runaway leader and five points up on the third-place team.

Bonus real baseball:

Child Three has one of the nicest line-drive swings in the league. Incredibly, he’s only made four outs at the plate so far this season and only two of those were strikeouts. He’s speedy, he fields adequately, and he has no arm. As Uncle Jeff observed, he’s like his dad.